


Silver Shell

by Lokei



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Moon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-30
Updated: 2007-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moonlight knows what the sun can’t see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silver Shell

It took a long time for Will to return to the moonlight.

Before it happened, he used to be hours at the forge—long after the insalubrious Brown had departed for the nearest tavern that would still take his credit. Will would enjoy the illusion of mastery which solitude allowed him, basking in the company of only the flame and the iron, which danced and bent to his desires. Then he would take half an hour or longer to himself, walking through the silvered streets of the sleeping town, sometimes down to the dock to remember the day he was pulled from the water, more often up the bluff towards the governor’s mansion. From a safe distance he could still see the candle glow of the Governor’s parties competing with the generous moonlight, and occasionally pick out the cadences of a familiar laugh before moving on, back down to the chores which waited, of firewood and water buckets to fetch and carry. Even the most mundane tasks were somehow lighter under the white round’s generous gaze, unearthly and special, as if the spilled water on the lip of the well held flecks of the future, and the wood’s gnarled bark tracked the paths of destiny.

After the Black Pearl’s attack and the days which followed, however, twilight found Will employing his long-legged stride to best effect, finishing all the errands for the next day’s preparation without a dally or dawdle, and the shutters to the forge latched tight before the rising of the first star. When and if he did find himself compelled to be out past dark, Will developed an itch between his shoulder-blades, which reminded him uncomfortably of the hatchet he had buried in that first cursed pirate’s back. He would find himself hitching or wriggling his shoulders under layers of linen, trying to rid himself of the itch, and with it the memory of the first man he thought he’d killed in a fit of righteous violence. The fact that the pirate had been undead and thoroughly unpleasant otherwise did not absolve Will of the knowledge that he had axed a man from behind, which in Jack Sparrow’s goes-around-comes-around sort of world now left Will open to exactly that fate.

Betrayal was a moonlit knife, a cruel crescent that glittered like the bone blade that had been poised at Will’s throat in what appeared to be his penultimate breath. It was the fractures of torchlight on piles of gold and silver that crested and dipped like the moon on the treacherous ocean, and it was the sound of all Will’s hopes dashed on the unrelenting surface of Elizabeth’s turned back.

That she had later recanted and thrown her lot in with his still did not sit well with Will. She had proclaimed her choice in the heat of a tropical midday sun that was known to drive men mad.

He was not sure he could believe he truly had her, to have and to hold, until she said it by the revealing moonlight.

Which was finally what drove Will back into the embrace of Selene’s nightly lamp, holding tight to the image of the mythical goddess’s lantern as he walked the familiar path to the Governor’s mansion. Her full round was at full intensity, unfiltered by cloud or fog, etching each edge with a sharpness which no blade could equal. There was an unreality to each step that had nothing to do with curses or pirates—indeed, there was nothing beyond the sense that he was being as inexorably tugged as the waves which he could hear beating their endless dance upon the beach at the foot of the bluff, part of a tide which pulled him in her web of silver to the point where he was meant to be.

So Will was not at all surprised to find Elizabeth on the edge of the bluff, hair tumbled and dressing gown mussed as she had been the night this all began, staring over her shoulder, and offering him her hand.

He took it, mouth open to ask all the questions that distilled to the one plea for truth which she read in his eyes. She put a finger to his lips and looked up into his face, her pale skin luminescent and her dark eyes bright.

“Just hold me,” she whispered, and that was truth.

And for now, that was enough.


End file.
